See what’s taking up your hard drive space with this freebie

Do you ever wonder how much storage space you have on your computer? Maybe you want to declutter your hard drive or troubleshoot why your computer is suddenly running so sluggishly.

On Windows 10, you just click on Settings (icon looks like a sprocket), then System, then Storage to see how much free space you have. (On older versions of Windows, go to Start >> Computer.) If you're low on space, you manually search your hard drive to see if there are any apps, folders or files you can delete.

SpaceSniffer

There's an easier and better way. Try this free tool SpaceSniffer, which lets you see a visual layout of your folders and files. Instead of digging through folders and folders of your data to check file sizes, just compare the boxes on the SpaceSniffer grid - the bigger the box, the more space it occupies.

To dig in deeper, just double-click on a box to see more details. If it's a folder, double-clicking on it will zoom your view in and show you the items within the folder. Double-clicking on these sub-folders will show you the items within the sub-folders, and so on and so forth.

Right-clicking on any item will give you the usual Windows contextual menu window where you can do the usual actions like Open, Cut, Copy, Create Shortcut, View Properties or Delete.

You can also play around with filters to view specific file types and color tag items to keep track of them. You can even add condition filters like specific dates or sizes to narrow your view to a particular set of files.

Note: Once you get a good idea of how many personal files you have with tools like SpaceSniffer, you'll realize how much data you can actually lose if disaster strikes. This is why a good backup service is essential. We recommend our sponsor IDrive. For a limited time, Kim Komando fans can save on protecting their data! Click here to save 50 percent on IDrive's 2 TB of cloud backup storage!

Download instructions

To download SpaceSniffer, click this link or the blue button below to take you straight to its main page. Click on the "Download" tab and select "Download from official mirror FossHub."

Since SpaceSniffer is a portable application, there's nothing to install. Just click "Run" on its SpaceSniffer executable and you can start scanning away. You can even save it on a portable USB drive and run it on multiple machines.

SpaceSniffer will work with Windows 7, 8 and we've tested it with Windows 10. It will also work with old legacy versions of Windows starting with Windows 2000.